Midwest Forensics Resource Center receives FLC Partnership award

AMES, Iowa â€“ The U.S. Department of Energyâ€™s Ames Laboratory Midwest Forensics Resource Centerreceived the Outstanding Partnership award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer Mid-Continent Region. The FLC Outstanding Partnership award recognizes the MFRCâ€™s efforts to promote technology transfer between federal government facilities and the private or public sectors.

The MFRC aims to develop new techniques in forensic science and to transfer those techniques to crime laboratories throughout the Midwest. One method of technology transfer is collaborative crime lab-centered forensic research projects that partner crime laboratories with scientists at the MFRC or Midwestern universities.

â€œAll of the MFRCâ€™s efforts are designed to develop, test and evaluate more efficient and reliable methods of analyzing evidence and to get information about those methods out into crime laboratories where we hope the new techniques will help busy forensic scientists,â€ said David Baldwin, director of the MFRC. â€œWe are pleased that the Federal Laboratory Consortium recognized our efforts and the efforts of our partner crime laboratories.â€

The MFRC also organizes training and development to transfer specialized forensic science and operations techniques to crime laboratory staff. Training topics range from examining the ink on questioned documents to bloodstain pattern analysis.

The FLC Outstanding Partnership award is jointly shared by the MFRC and MFRCâ€™s 2007-2008 research, development and technology transfer partners: Federal, state and local publicly funded crime laboratories in the states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

â€œI am thrilled the MFRC was recognized by the Mid-Continent Region of the FLC,â€ said Deb Covey, Ames Laboratory associate director of sponsored research. â€œSince its inception, the MFRC has exemplified the term â€˜technology transferâ€™ by not only partnering with the Midwest forensic community to provide new techniques and processes, but also by effectively transferring knowledge through new training components.â€